#language geography

[linguisticmaps]

Light verb constructions

A light verb is a verb deprived of its basic meaning. Many languages employ them in extensive constructions of verb+noun, instead of forming new verbs. 

In English, the verb “make” can be a light verb, as in “make the bed”. It doesn’t mean that you are going to literally “build a bed”. But in many languages these constructions are the norm for new verbs that enter the language and are extremely common. 

In many languages, like Basque, Persian, Hindi, or Japanese, instead of “to clean” one can have “do cleaning”, or instead of “to speak”, “to make talk”, or instead of “to hug”, “to give hug”. 

A light verb is in the midway between a full lexical verb and an auxialiry verb. In English a few verbs can function as light verbs (do, make, give, take, have) but these constructions are not the norm. 

If you know more languages that use these constructions frequently (I’m not sure about Turkic languages), please inform me.

[linguisten]

Tone and humidity

Does the weather effect the languages we speak?

This week, Caleb Everett, Damian Blasi and I have a paper out in PNAS on the effects of humidity on the production and perception of lexical tone, and the subsequent predictions about the distribution of tone across the world.

Map of humidity (lighter = more humid) with complex tone languages in red and non-complex tone languages in blue.

The basic principle behind studies of cultural evolution is that a selective pressure on communication can transform the structures of a language over time.  What we explore is whether speaking in dry environments exerts a pressure to avoid using sounds that are more difficult to produce or comprehend, leading to those sounds being selected against.

This isn’t exactly a new idea.  There have been previous studies linking the sonority of a language’s phoneme inventory to climate variables, based on similar principles (here and here), and more recently, Caleb Everett looked at ejectives and altitude (which we’ve previously reviewed).  However, our study uses a much larger sample than previous studies, and has stricter controls for genealogical and areal relationships.

The first part of our paper reviews a basic finding from various experiments:  inhaling dry air dries out the vocal folds, leading to adverse effects in articulation, specifically aspects of phonation that are important for careful control of pitch.  That is, in dry environments, distinctions in pitch come under a selective pressure. [...]

[linguisten]

Rapoport's Rule Revisited: Geographical Distributions of Human Languages

http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0107623

Rapoport’s Rule Revisited: Geographical Distributions of Human Languages

By Michael C. Gavin, John Richard Stepp

One of the most well studied ecological patterns is Rapoport’s rule, which posits that the geographical extent of species ranges increases at higher latitudes. However, studies to date have been limited in their geographic scope and results have been equivocal. In turn, much debate exists over potential links between Rapoport’s rule and latitudinal patterns in species richness. Humans collectively speak nearly 7000 different languages, which are spread unevenly across the globe, with loci in the tropics. Causes of this skewed distribution have received only limited study. We analyze the extent of Rapoport’s rule in human languages at a global scale and within each region of the globe separately. We test the relationship between Rapoport’s rule and the richness of languages spoken in different regions. We also explore the frequency distribution of language-range sizes. The language-range area distribution is strongly right-skewed, with 87% of languages having range areas less than 10,000 km2, and only nine languages with range areas over 1,000,000 km2. At a global scale, language-range extents and areas are positively correlated with latitude. At a global scale and in five of the six regions examined, language-range extent and language-range area are strongly correlated with language richness. Our results point to group boundary formation as a critical mediator of the relationship between Rapoport’s rule and diversity patterns. Where strong group boundaries limit range overlap, as is the case with human languages, and range sizes increase with latitude, latitudinal richness gradients may result.